


knowing this is all my fault

by ohallows



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: (divergent after 154 so no leadership stuff), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Awkwardness, Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Guilt, discussions of child abuse, discussions of depression, discussions of zolf’s shipwreck, parallels to paris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26002213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: Everyone else is busy, trying to figure out what to do next. Is being useful. Hamid’s just staying in his room, barely even able to eat the meals that Zolf, Azu, and Cel keep leaving outside his door, trying to ignore the panicked, distressed screams that echo through his head, a memory from the lab that he doesn’t think he’s ever going to escape.He doesn’t deserve to. Not after what he’d done.
Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Zolf Smith
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	knowing this is all my fault

**Author's Note:**

> okay listen yes this is a cliche but i am VIBRATING thinking about this because. the parallelism!!! between this and paris!!! WE COULD HAVE HAD IT!!!!
> 
> also i want to live in a world where hamid actually has to directly deal with the internal consequences of this decision a bit more
> 
> standard disclaimer the kobold leadership feat doesn’t exist bc i dislike it

Hamid’s laying in bed - he doesn’t, actually, know what time it is; there aren’t any clocks in the room, and the curtains have been pulled shut, so he can’t tell if the sun’s even out. He doesn’t remember the last time he slept, or how much time has passed since; it could have been hours, or maybe days, or maybe only minutes. Everything seems to be… running together, since they got out of the jail cell. They spoke to Shoin, got some answers, but Hamid doesn’t remember if that was two or five days ago. He remembers what was  _ said,  _ of course, has been running all the information through his head on repeat until it all blurred together into a single thread that he can’t puzzle out any further. 

He’s not even sure if he  _ wants  _ to. 

Everyone else is busy, trying to figure out what to do next. Is being  _ useful.  _ Hamid’s just staying in his room, barely even able to eat the meals that Zolf, Azu, and Cel keep leaving outside his door, trying to ignore the panicked, distressed screams that echo through his head, a memory from the lab that he doesn’t think he’s ever going to escape. 

He doesn’t deserve to. Not after what he’d done. 

The week in the cell had been… fine. They’d gotten drunk the first night, Hamid and Zolf had had a conversation, Zolf had confessed to killing his brother, Cel had chosen to stay, and Azu and Hamid had fallen asleep hand in hand. No one had really spoken much after that - nothing of any importance, anyway. Everyone had been slightly on edge, but as the week had progressed without a hint of the infection, everyone had mostly relaxed into doing their own things to pass the time. Hamid had felt tightly wound the whole time, tamping down his emotions until smiling and laughing felt natural. 

Hamid doesn’t really know what changed. He didn’t have the nightmares in the cell, didn’t constantly hear the screaming in his ears, but the second he’d ended up alone in a room, happy to have some time to himself, everything had come rushing back. 

He’d tried staving them off, going and spending time in Azu’s room, sleeping curled up against her, but it didn’t work - and he didn’t like keeping her awake with his nightmares, either. His own room is… well,  _ safe  _ isn’t quite the correct word, not when his dreams are haunted by the mistakes he’s made. 

“Hamid?” he hears through the door, a soft voice accompanied by a quiet knock. Zolf.

He doesn’t respond. Everyone’s been doing this, recently. Cel will come and try to cajole him to come outside using their experiments, but Hamid just… doesn’t have the energy. They always sound disappointed when they walk away, and Hamid  _ does  _ feel bad, he  _ does,  _ it’s only that - well, it’s so  _ buried,  _ under the weight of the guilt and the other memories that he can’t escape. Azu comes up to try to talk to him a few times a day, asking him how he is and then lapsing into telling stories about everyone else, most likely to try to cheer him up. It doesn’t work; Hamid almost wishes he could force himself out of this, just to make Azu stop sounding so  _ sad, _ but… he just  _ can’t. _

He knows when it’s Zolf outside his door because he can hear the solid thump of the metal legs in the hallway. Zolf doesn’t normally speak, just knocks once, twice, and then sits outside Hamid’s door for a few hours. Neither of them ever speak (until today, apparently), but sometimes Hamid feels some of pressure lift, just for a second, knowing he’s not alone.

“Er, listen, just.” He can imagine Zolf looking left and right awkwardly, brushing a hand through his hair as he tries to figure out what to say next. Eyes squeezing shut as he works his way through the words, sighing as he tries to put them together. “Look. I know. How this feels. Er. Questioning… everything, wondering if anything you did was. Right. Er. Turning the decisions over and over in your mind. I - I get it. And. If you want to talk about it, I can. Listen.”

Hamid doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches as he lays there, with Zolf just on the other side of the door, and Hamid flashes back to Paris for a moment, remembers falling asleep against Zolf’s door with no idea how to help him, and thinks he understands Zolf a bit better, now. 

“Sorry,” Zolf says, and Hamid hears him take a step back. “I know you probably want to be alone, er. I’ll. Yeah.”

Hamid continues to stare at the wall, feeling listless, but. 

… He doesn’t really want to be alone, anymore. 

He snaps his fingers and the door opens; light from the hallway outside spills into the room, stretching across the floor, and he shields his eyes. Zolf is silhouetted in the doorway, a step farther away than he was, but he instantly turns to look back at Hamid, an unreadable look on his face that Hamid wants to think might be some sort of hope. 

“You can come in,” he says, and his voice is cracked from disuse and tears. Zolf takes a step inside, almost hesitant, as though he’s worried Hamid’s going to change his mind the second he realises what he’s said. He doesn’t need to worry, though; Hamid feels a bit too tired to question every single one of his decisions, now.

Well. Apart from one. He shuts his eyes and pulls the covers up to his shoulders, tempted to cover his head with them, but electing them to leave them here for the time being. 

Zolf shuts the door behind him with a gentle click; the door goes back to being in darkness, and Hamid opens his eyes. It doesn’t really matter: he can’t see Zolf anymore, not  _ really,  _ but he can hear him hovering in the doorway, not stepping any closer. A few moments pass, them both sitting there in silence, but for the first time, it’s less awkward between them then it has been. Hamid likes that, at least.

“Hey,” Zolf says, and Hamid wants to laugh, wants to pretend like everything is fine, is  _ normal,  _ because Zolf’s been talking at him through the door but of  _ course  _ he’s this awkward when they’re face to face. Just… he hasn’t felt much like laughing, recently. Or felt much like  _ anything,  _ really. 

Hamid doesn’t answer; Zolf doesn’t seem to be waiting for one, anyway, as he crosses the room and sits down on the edge of the bed, as far away from Hamid as he can possibly get while still being on the bed. He can’t blame him; Hamid doesn’t really want to be close to  _ himself  _ either. 

“Did you want…” Zolf trails off, and snaps his own fingers. Hamid stares in his general direction for a moment, before realising he’s referring to spark, and shakes his head. He doesn’t need to speak; Zolf can see in the dark well enough, and for a moment Hamid panics, because his makeup is streaked and his hair is falling in limp curls and his eyes are red and - well, it fades, then, because it’s hard to care about that. Zolf’s seen him look worse, anyway, in the catacombs under Paris with dirt and muck caking his skin. 

“Feels like a bit of role reversal, eh?” Zolf says quietly, nothing more than a shadow against the darkness of the room.

Hamid swallows heavily, because he remembers being on the other side of this, remembers holding Zolf’s hand in his as Zolf thrashed and screamed and sobbed, and it feels like it was  _ years  _ ago, now. He’s… so different, has grown so  _ much _ since then, but right now he feels like the same privileged, unaware mess of an adventurer who sees the world in black and white. 

Maybe he hasn’t grown as much as he’d thought. 

“You can… talk to me, you know?” Zolf says. “Or - I know it’s - yeah, er, been weird? With me back, I mean, I - it’s hard to. Get back into the swing of things, as it - anyway, er. Could talk to Azu. I know you two are close, and. You don’t have to talk to me, is what I’m saying. Azu’s there too. And probably Cel? If you asked?” He sighs. “Look, I’m just trying to say… you aren’t in this alone.”

The silence stretches, as tenuous as a thin strand of thread, weightless against the guilt pulling Hamid’s heart down. 

“... Fancy throwing something?” Zolf asks, breaking the quiet when Hamid still doesn’t answer, and a crystal decanter of  _ something  _ brushes against Hamid’s arm under the covers. Hamid shakes his head, and Zolf tucks it back inside his coat, shrugging. “Doesn’t always help, anyway.”

Hamid wonders if it ever does. Breaking things when you’re angry, or sad, or lost. His father had done it, sometimes, as recently as Aziza’s funeral, when he threw a chair against the wall. That hadn’t been anything new - when Hamid had been growing up, his father had expressed his anger through action. Anytime the bank was doing poorly, Hamid could hear him stomping around, could listen to his fist pounding the wall next to the desk after a particularly disappointing call with the shareholders. Even through the thick walls of the door, Hamid and Saira would be able to hear the books and glasses being thrown against the wall, huddling silently together in the hallway. 

It was never against the family - he never raised a hand to a single one of them,  _ ever _ . Not even when Hamid was kicked out, not even when Aziza ran away to join a local opera company and stay with her girlfriend of four years without telling anyone, not even when Saleh accidentally spilled at least three cases of decades-old wine in their cellar. He never lashed out directly at them, but words sometimes hurt as much as an open-palmed slap does. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time my ship crashed?” Zolf says, cutting through his thoughts, and it’s still so conversational, brushing up against the edge of normalcy so that Hamid feels, for a moment, like this can be just them talking. 

He nods. “Back in Dover.”

“Ah, right. Been a while,” Zolf says, leaning back a bit. Hamid can feel the bed shifting with his movements. “I mean, I told you about the aftermath, yeah? But nothing - not much about the actual crash?”

Hamid shakes his head; Zolf had been pretty vague about it at the time, keeping mostly to the bare bones, and Hamid doesn’t remember much of the story anyway. 

“I wasn’t the one who spotted the thing in the water. It was my mate, er. Red, we called him. Pointed it out, said we needed to get away as fast as we could. Captain Samael… he didn't listen, but it was too late anyway. The ship went down quicker than we could do… anything. No one could make it to the lifeboats in time, we all just had to. Sit there and pray we’d survive.

“It’s not… I know it isn’t completely the same,” Zolf says, sounding almost sheepish. “It wasn’t - I didn’t have to make the call, I was just a crewmember, it wasn’t  _ on  _ me, but. I still watched them all die in front of me, drowning or burning or. Whatever got them, in the end. I didn’t…  _ do.  _ It. I don’t… I can’t understand that guilt. Maybe Cel can? I dunno. I’m - look. Getting lost in nightmares is something I  _ do _ understand. I… I still hear them yelling. All these years later, I can - I still see their faces in my mind as the ship snapped, can hear the groaning of the wood as it got pulled under the water. It never really… went away.”

He stops, trailing off a bit as he shifts on the bed, and Hamid can only just barely see how his hands are twisting around each other. 

“How -“ Hamid says, speaking for the first time since Zolf had come in, but he cuts himself off when his voice cracks. He swallows, heavily, and looks away. “How did you… get through it?” he asks, wrapping his arms around his stomach as he leans against the wall behind his bed. His hair is falling into his eyes, but he can’t be bothered to brush it away. It’s not like he can see anything. 

Zolf smiles up at him. “I didn’t. Not at first. My, er - you know I was picked up by a pirate ship? Spent the first two weeks in the brig, left all alone with nothing but my regrets and the memory of the crew dying around me, til the captain finally decided I was trustworthy. Erika… helped me through. The other crew did, too. You - people need to have a. Support system, I guess. People to help them, er. Move on.”

“How am I  _ supposed _ to…  _ move on _ from this?” Hamid asks, no louder than a whisper, but Zolf hears him fine all the same.

“You won’t,” he says, and it’s blunt and sharp and so  _ like  _ him that Hamid can’t help but feel slightly comforted by the familiarity. “Decisions like this… they never truly go away. But they, er. Fade? At least in time. It’s not something you can. Escape. And it shouldn’t be, not really. You need to, er. Learn from it. Use it to shape how you act going forward.”

Hamid shrinks into himself again, turning until his face is half buried in the pillow. He can feel the tears rising again, because that just feels so  _ big,  _ and he’s terrified of fucking up  _ again.  _ Because he already  _ has,  _ hasn’t he? After Grizzop had told him to be better, had asked him if he was  _ trying,  _ and Hamid hadn’t lied when he said he had been, that he always  _ would,  _ but it feels like nothing more than a lie now. 

“What if I don’t?”  _ What if I haven't? _

“Look, it - there’s only… so much you can do,” Zolf says. “To atone, I mean. Your choices can’t, er. Hamstring you. That’s all any of us can do, really. Er. You just. Need to keep moving forward. Doing what you  _ can. _

“You know I killed my brother,” he says, and he might pretend to be over it, pretend to be content, but Hamid can hear the guilt and regret and pain that still fills his voice even this far after it happened. “I let myself… break. Completely. And maybe I needed to, maybe that was what got me  _ going  _ again, but… I didn’t have anyone, back then. You have people now, Hamid. Okay? And we’re all here. I mean, because we can’t  _ leave,  _ but also because, well, we  _ want  _ to be. Alright?”

Hamid… doesn’t know what to say to that. He knows he has people to support him, knows that they all care about him in their ways, but it’s hard to internalise that, sometimes. To remember. To  _ start  _ talking. 

Maybe he should. Maybe Zolf’s right. 

“What happened to ‘not everything can be fixed by a heart to heart’?” Hamid says in lieu of anything else, and Zolf chuckles quietly.

“Maybe some things can be,” Zolf says, and Hamid realises that he missed Zolf changing, too. He wishes he hadn’t. Zolf leaving in the brewery had hurt, had reached deep inside Hamid’s chest and torn away a part of his heart that he hadn’t even known he’d given away (a tear that only got worse when they’d lost Sasha and Grizzop). He wonders if Zolf thinks the same, if he misses having seen Hamid and Sasha change. It’s so  _ different,  _ now, the both of them so far from who they used to be. 

“Maybe they can,” Hamid echoes, and he thinks maybe he understands why Zolf and Azu get along as well as they do. They have such different approaches, such different outlooks, but the core is the same. Hamid… Hamid’s happy for him. That Zolf seems to have found that core for himself, and clung to it. 

“You know…” Zolf says, trailing off as he takes a deep breath. “Someone told me, once, that what matters is that we keep trying, even with the mistakes. That we don’t let that become all we are.”

Hamid snorts. “They sound like an immature prat.”

Zolf nudges him in the side, and Hamid thinks he might be smiling slightly in the darkness. “He was, back then.”

Hamid bites his lip at that, and his voice warbles when he asks, “And now?”

Zolf pauses, for a moment. “Less.”

Hamid sits up and whacks him in the arm, but can’t help letting out a surprised laugh. “You  _ arse.” _

“He’s only a  _ bit  _ of a prat, now,” Zolf defends, and there’s a teasing note in his tone that Hamid’s missed. “I haven’t forgotten you trying to stop for a meal in the middle of the lab, you know.”

Hamid scoffs. “We’d been going for  _ hours, _ and I was  _ starving.” _

“It had maybe been two hours, Hamid. And we’d  _ just  _ eaten,” Zolf says, and Hamid can’t see him but he  _ knows  _ an eyebrow is raised. 

“Exactly!” he exclaims, throwing his hands to the side, but he falters slightly when Zolf chuckles. 

“There he is,” he murmurs. “Thought maybe we’d lost you.”

Hamid doesn’t really feel up to smiling, not yet, but it feels like  _ something  _ has shifted, over the course of the conversation, and while the void of guilt and anger and regret is still  _ there,  _ it’s not as… present, as it used to be. 

“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” he whispers back, and it doesn’t feel like going through the motions, it feels like he has a  _ piece  _ of himself back, and he doesn’t know how to thank Zolf for that. He’s too tired to even think about it - the nights of nightmares have finally caught up, and Zolf seems to understand, based on how he reaches forward and squeezes Hamid’s shoulder.

“I’ll, er - I’ll let you get some rest.” Zolf slips off the bed, giving Hamid one last look before he turns to leave, and there’s something in his gaze that makes Hamid feel peeled open from the inside out, and he can’t look back, swallowing heavily as he stares off into the darkness. Zolf takes a step, and before Hamid can think better of it, he reaches out and catches Zolf’s wrist in his. His fingers wrap around, squeezing gently, and he can feel Zolf’s heartbeat, a steady thrumming under his fingertips. 

“Can you… stay?” Hamid asks, and he knows Zolf is thinking of Paris as well, of how Zolf continued to send him away so that he could stew in his own depression and grief. He’s not like that, though. 

“Yeah, Hamid,” Zolf says, and it’s like it’s breathed out of him, so quiet in the stillness that Hamid thinks for a moment he might have imagined it. 

Zolf’s wrist leaves his grip for a moment, slips out before Hamid can catch him, before he can leave  _ again.  _ He needn’t have worried; a chair scrapes across the ground, and then Zolf is back, a quiet thump as he sits down in the chair. Hamid might not be able to see anything other than his outline in the dark, but even just knowing he’s there is enough, and he reaches out again until Zolf’s hand finds his and squeezes. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, and then lets the darkness carry him away as he slips into the first dreamless slumber he’s had in what feels like ages. 

He wakes up the next morning to the sun streaming through his blinds; Zolf must have opened them at some point last night, and Hamid shields his eyes against the light. 

It’s a new morning.

Zolf is asleep in the chair next to him, snoring quietly and looking as uncomfortable as anything. Hamid feels another pang of guilt shoot through him as he winces; thankfully, both he and Azu have enough spells to make up for sore muscles. His prosthetic legs are resting against the chair, although one must have tipped over in the night.

Hamid knows he should get up, should wake up Zolf and let him heal himself from aches, but instead he lies there, watching Zolf for a moment. He doesn’t think he deserves having Zolf sit up all night with him, but… well, maybe it’s not always about what you deserve, and more about what you’re given. What you accept. 

He’s lucky to have Zolf. To have  _ all  _ of them, to have people who care about him and want to help him and love him. And he’s not going to take that for granted, ever. 

It’s going to be slow-going; he still can’t think of Shoin without thinking of the kobolds and what he did, but… well, in time, it will grow distant. Hamid will do what he can to atone. To make up for the decisions he’s made - because he can accept that it’s the only way to move forward, now. He won’t ever be completely free of it, but it’s like Zolf said: he  _ shouldn’t  _ be. Not when his decision was so… massive. 

And, one day… he’ll be  _ alright _ . 

**Author's Note:**

> GOD THAT FOREHEAD TOUCH LAST EP HUH
> 
> obligatory ‘idk how to end things’


End file.
